Caritas Children's Project sponsored by Middlesea

Middlesea Valletta is sponsoring the Caritas Children's Project, a new service that seeks to bridge the relationship gap between residents and their families, especially children. The sponsorship was presented by Mr Mario C. Grech, deputy chairman and CEO of Middlesea Valletta Life, to Mgr Victor Grech, director of Caritas Malta.

This project, planned over three phases and currently in its first phase, is the result of recent research as well as long years of experience. It has been found out that, in certain cases, residents following Caritas's programmes have poor parenting skills and, therefore, need to be helped to gain confidence in their ability to provide their children with a safe, loving upbringing and to relearn skills they may have had, and lost.

In this regard, the Caritas Children's Project involves supervised contact between the residents and their children with the aim of helping residents develop better parenting skills, restore parent-child bonds, and foster greater unity between all the family members.

Following this first phase, the project will enter the second phase that will involve longer supervised visits by the children with their parents on weekends and the development of a specialised environment for the children consisting of play rooms, bedrooms, a kitchenette, a dining room and a group room.

This will ultimately lead to phase three, where Caritas will introduce the possibility of children spending the entire weekend at the residential area with full supervision and support.